Addiction
by C. Abelard
Summary: speculation about the dark side


Spoilers for TDYK, TLE, MFN.  
This rose out of what seemed to be a general theme circulating a while back. It's a fragment, with no plans to continue (you stand warned). It's set after MFN, and exists outside of the timeline that's marched on since. I don't own the characters, nor am I making money off this, etc.  
(This is my first time posting here, so please excuse any technical/formatting errors.)  
  
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Addiction  
  
  
  
He didn't want them to know.  
  
He sat in the chair, not reading. His fingers turned the pages at regular intervals, his eyes moved back and forth across the words, but his mind was on the craving.  
  
He had never been interested in drugs, had never understood why any person would willingly give anything so much control over his life. Even knowing what he did about the biological facets of addiction, he still held with the common attitude that it really was an issue of willpower, of character. The "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" philosophy was deeply ingrained in him. Maybe he'd gotten it from his aunt and uncle after his parents' deaths; maybe he'd just misunderstood the message all his life. Either way, he'd always believed that a strong person, a worthy person, would be able to beat anything they wanted to.   
  
Turns out the wanting was the hard part. Especially when you wanted something else so much more.  
  
He ran a hand through his hair, still staring at the book he didn't see. He used to love to read, but now found himself too distracted most of the time to get anything out of it. They tended to leave him alone, though, if he had his nose in a book. It was a convenient, portable hiding place. He spent a lot of time hiding these days.  
  
He didn't want them to know.  
  
It wasn't just the way he knew they'd look at him if they found out just how much he wanted, needed his fix, although the shame was powerful. Even now, thinking of the humiliation of exposure brought a flush to his face and a cold lump to his throat. More frightening was the knowledge that they would turn it against him, somehow, this need. He had played chicken with the Official once, and had lost. He only hoped the fat man never figured out just how much.  
  
He thought of the days following the trip to Arnaud's casino, and his spirits sank a little deeper. Arnaud had planned for addiction, was counting on it for control, but...once again, it seemed, had only thought halfway through. How could anyone expect to control someone desperate? The craving had been growing, slowly, for some time, but had been worse since then. He wondered if some ingredient in what he'd been given had caused the increased desire, or if he had just grown weaker.  
  
He tested himself, waiting longer and longer between shots, pushing closer to the edge. He'd been chastised once for mismanaging himself and was now trapped playing along. He didn't dare tip his hand. It was so hard, especially here, in the lab. He saw Claire look over at him and pretended he hadn't. He'd gotten distracted and been idle too long; he quickly turned a page and tried to look engrossed. Too late.  
  
She walked over, making small talk he tried to ignore. Yes, he was fine, he was just thinking. Nothing. Really. He presented his arm as he was bid, knowing what she'd say. Not quite yet - still four segments green. Control, tolerance, responsibility...he'd heard them all before. That last one had become the mantra, though, since the casino. He had to be responsible about the shots. The unspoken threat, of course, was that if he wasn't responsible, they would be. The leash would be pulled even tighter. The worst case scenario, which no one had actually said, but which he knew was there, was imprisonment.  
  
He'd always hated confinement, and had a special terror of the white room, but... There were times even that was starting to seem like a reasonable price to pay. Times in the middle of the night - in the dark, alone, staring at the tattoo as the silver ants crawled through his brain, faster and more intricate until swarming out of his pores onto his skin, into his eyes, turning both red and green segments alike a monochrome gray. He could fight them, push them away, destroy them by the thousands, but their mother the queen was boundless, her children infinite. And every drop added to the longing.  
  
The door slid open and his partner came in, and together they talked at him about unimportant things. He felt beaten, like their words were awkward birds, wings buffeting his face until he wanted to jump up, screaming. With one promise, he held himself in check. Tonight. He would do it tonight. He would take what he needed tonight. He excused himself and fled.  
  
Late, in the mid-night, he sat in the glow of the single lamp, a part of him still tugging at the mythical bootstraps. If he were stronger, if situations were different... There had been offers, hollow ones, in the last year. Lawson had promised to give him control over the shots, but had played him. He still hated Lawson, but had to admit at least the bastard had been honest. Once the trap had been sprung, there were none of the games that the Official played. Lawson had tried to keep him a secret; Borden had used him as bait giving his file over to the enemy.  
  
Chrysalis. He had found himself wondering, more and more often, if it would have been better with them...if they would have provided more readily what the Official held back. He knew they were empty speculations. He couldn't go over to them now even if he'd wanted to. Besides, he knew there was only one person in the world who had control over what he craved.   
  
He cupped his palm and filled it with quicksilver, watching the liquid shimmer between silver and black as it played with the light. He poured it, like water, onto his other hand and rubbed them together, spreading the quicksilver equally over both. His fingers, palms, a bit of one wrist, disappeared. He turned his hands this way and that, still vaguely unsettled by the sensation of feeling his limbs without being able to see them. He rubbed his hands together again. Within the quicksilver, he was immune to fire, to cold...  
  
He hesitated. It would hurt them, what he was going to do, especially Hobbes. He'd have to come up with some story, some rationale. He'd become skilled at lying about this - he'd make it work. And if not, well, he told himself he wouldn't care too much about it. But a part of him did care. It screamed piteously in the back of his mind to stop, but it was tired...too tired to fight anymore. It fell to the craving with a last whisper of regret, but it fell.   
  
He quicksilvered completely with a sigh, color sliding out of the world, with the promise that fear and cares would go, too, if just given enough time. It would hurt, it would hurt like hell, but that pain was short and promised an Eden on the other side, not like the endless, suffocating days of pretense. There would be questions, possibly punishment, but for one more taste of that freedom, he'd dare...dare just about anything. As the pain built in his skull, pulling him toward the insanity's forgiving embrace, he waited for the shame to be burned away.  
  
Because now they'd know.  
  
  
  



End file.
